The Sci-Fi Thriller On Netflix With An Avatar Star Everyone Forgot
Sam Worthington has been in two of the biggest sci-fi movies of all time, Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water, but in between those movies, he starred in a sci-fi film that you may have missed. The film is called The Titan, and it completely flew under the radar when it was released in 2018. If you’re looking for a sci-fi movie to watch, you can give this one a chance and stream it this weekend on Netflix.
The Titan takes place in a future Earth where the planet is overpopulated and beset with violent conflicts. Humanity’s only hope for survival is to find a new home on the Saturn moon Titan. To ensure that humanity can survive on the inhospitable planet, an experiment is put together to evolve 14 test subjects to withstand the super-cold methane liquids and the ultra-low oxygen atmosphere of the moon.
The film was quite an international collaboration, as it was a co-production between the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and Spain.
Sam Worthington plays Rick Janssen, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who volunteers for the experiment. The Titan also stars Taylor Schilling and Noah Jupe as Janssen’s family, who move to the test facility with him. The rest of the cast is rounded out by Tom Wilkinson, Agyness Deyn, Nathalie Emmanuel, Diego Boneta, Corey Johnson, and Aleksandar Jovanovic.
The Titan is directed by Lennart Ruff with a screenplay by Max Hurwitz, with the story by Arash Amel. The story is lightly adapted from the Nebula award-winning novel Man Plus by Frederick Pohl. Interestingly, the film was quite an international collaboration, as it was a co-production between the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and Spain.
It would be understandable if you missed the release of The Titan back in 2018 because its release was a bit scattershot. While it was released in theaters in the UK, it was released in some countries on Netflix. It also went direct to video in Germany later that year. So, unless you had access to it on Netflix or you saw it in theaters in the UK, you might have missed the release altogether.
The Titan, starring Avatar alumni Sam Worthington, is available to watch on Netflix.
As interesting as the premise of The Titan is, the film unfortunately doesn’t quite live up to it. Upon its release, the movie got pretty mixed reviews, and some of the reviews outright hated the movie. For the most part, the criticism is that the story isn’t all that interesting, which is obviously something you want to avoid if you’re making a sci-fi movie.
Still, The Titan isn’t entirely devoid of merit, and there’s a chance you may like the film if you’re looking for something a little different to watch this weekend. With that being said, the world of streaming means there are a ton of things to watch out there, and this film might end up not being worth your time.
In any case, the film did continue Sam Worthington’s streak of bad luck when it comes to finding good films outside of the Avatar franchise to be in.
Sam Worthington followed up his lead role in 2009’s Avatar with the abysmal Clash of the Titans film in 2010. Again, this was a case of the material being pretty bad, and it wasn’t necessarily Worthington’s fault that the movie was such a massive flop. However, when he tried his hand at returning to the sci-fi well again with The Titan, that ended up not working out too well either, and that film was similarly panned.
Sam Worthington In Avatar
Fortunately, Worthington was able to get back in the swing of things with Avatar: The Way of Water, which ended up being the third highest-grossing film of all time (right behind Avengers: Endgame and the original Avatar in the top spot).
Worthington will surely be in the next Avatar film, so you can almost guarantee that he will have another extremely successful sci-fi blockbuster on the way soon. Films like The Titan and Clash of the Titans may have been a miss for him, but it seems virtually impossible that any upcoming Avatar movie won’t make buckets of money.
Perhaps it’s best if Sam Worthington just avoids starring in any movies with the word “Titan” in the title. In any case, we should see Worthington appear again in Avatar 3, which currently has a release date set for December 2025. In the meantime, you can stream The Titan on Netflix now if you’re so inclined.
